The myth of ecocide

So now we know: the idea that the Amazon rainforest is burning on an unprecedented scale and that these fires will rob humanity of one of its key sources of oxygen is fake news. It is hard to think of any other global event this year that has been as awash with misinformation as the rainforest fires. We’ve been told these fires are a calamity, an act of ‘ecocide’; they’re proof of humanity’s contempt for the environment; they will blacken and possibly even destroy ‘the lungs of the world’, as the rainforests are referred to, given they produce 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen. It’s all untrue. We are being misled.

Everything – from the photos of fires being shared by heartbroken celebs to the wild claims about these fires harming the whole of humanity – is false. Some of the photos of the fires being tearfully shared on social media are 10 or 20 years old. Many are not pictures of the Amazon at all. Some are from south Brazil, others from India and Sweden. The idea that millions of glorious, oxygen-producing trees are been burnt to a cinder by evil humans is nonsense, too. To the extent that there has been an increase in fires in the Amazon – and this itself is a deceptive claim – many of this year’s new fires are of dry scrubland, where trees have already been felled.

It is untrue that the fires are historically huge or unprecedented. NASA says the Amazon fires are ‘slightly below average this year’. Many are pointing out that we are witnessing the highest number of fires in the Amazon for seven years. But as meteorologist Jesse Ferrell reports, prior to 2012 there were many years in which the Amazon had worse fires than this year’s: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010. As Ferrell says, there are always fires on Earth: ‘Thousands of fires are continually burning across the Earth every day of every year, and they always have.’ The idea that what is currently happening in the Amazon is shockingly unusual or apocalyptic or proof of man’s fascistic disdain for his environment is an entirely politicised interpretation of a perfectly normal event.

The claim that the Amazon rainforest is the ‘lungs of the world’, producing 20 per cent of the Earth’s oxygen, is also bunkum. It has been cited everywhere, by people who want us to believe that these fires will have a dire impact on all of humanity and perhaps on the very survival of our species. But as even the Guardianfelt moved to report, ‘it is not clear where this figure originated’. Climate expert Michael Mann says ‘the true figure is likely to be no more than six per cent’. The Guardian also points out that the crops being planted in place of felled trees in the Amazon – by farmers who are talked about as pure evil by Western greens – will also produce oxygen, and ‘quite likely at higher levels’ than the trees they replace. So the ‘oxygen crisis’ is complete fantasy.

More broadly, it simply isn’t true that mankind is at war with forestland. As made clear by a substantial report in Nature, published last year, the world’s tree cover has increased over the past 35 years. In three decades, 2.24million square kilometres of trees – an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined – have been added to the world’s already existing tree-covered land. The study, involving satellite analysis of the Earth from 1982 to 2016, found that while there has been some tree loss in subtropical areas, this has been ‘outweighed by tree-cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions’. Part of this vast expansion is down to China’s historic tree-planting programme. The UN refers to it as mankind’s largest ‘tree-planting crusade’, in which China’s forest coverage has increased from 8.6 per cent in 1949 to 21 per cent in 2017. So much for the Chinese being evil polluters. All these new trees to have swarmed the Earth since 1982 will be producing oxygen, so the apocalyptic Western middle-classes can calm down about not being able to breathe.

In the words of Michael Shellenberger, one of the critical voices on the increasingly hysterical discussion of the rainforest fires, ‘Everything they say about the Amazon… is wrong’. Out-of-control fires, trees disappearing, oxygen in crisis, the climate being pushed to the edge – it is all wrong, all based in fear, not facts.

Perhaps the most destructive myth is that Brazilians and others are engaged in ‘ecocide’. This emotive word, cynically designed to invoke thoughts of the evil of genocide, is designed to demonise human activity that impacts on the environment. It is motored by an arrogant, intolerant view among Western greens in particular that says people in the developing world who do what we have already done – fell forests, clear land for agriculture, elevate human needs over a sanctified view of nature – are guilty of a crime and deserve to be punished.

There is a neo-colonial instinct behind this accusation. It is a slur wielded by privileged Westerners who have already benefited from industrial revolutions and decades of modernisation against emergent economic powerhouses who want to do likewise: Brazil, China, India. Worse, it sets these nations up for outside intervention. The G7 has already agreed to send resources to resolve the rainforest fires, and some Western greens are fantasising about armed forces – ‘green helmets’ – going around the world to save nature from the destructive activity of the developing world’s inhabitants. What an ugly, borderline imperialist notion. The global condescension of the modern environmentalist movement is captured perfectly in this suggestion that we should treat foreigners as criminals simply because they want what we already have.

Michael Lynch

1st September 2019 at 12:23 pm

Just had a blazing row with the other half over this. Until, that is, I showed her a National Geographic article (on their website) that specifically states that The Amazon produces a virtually zero Oxygen contribution to the World’s atmosphere. Oxygen production versus carbon absorption is cancelled out via the process of photosynthesis. Oxygen is actually produced, in the main, by Ocean borne plankton. Also, whilst Brendan is essentially right about the NASA data regarding the fires, it would be more truthful to state that not all the data is in yet for 2019. Until the 31st December then it cannot be compared to previous years. Currently, the Data is showing slightly more fire activity compared to this time last year. However, it has to be said that most of the fires are in already cleared areas of scrub.
The trouble with pop stars and politicians stating things without checking the facts is leading to a lack of credibility for the Green debate in general. Most of these people are hypocrites of the worst kind and want us to feel their guilt for their own massively inflated carbon footprints. Macron merely wants to justify his actions against the Gilet Jaunes and nothing more. The net effect is more harm than good and it’s putting off ordinary folk from taking action. This is how it will continue I’m afraid. This is Easter Island 2.0 and if you are banking on Politicians (left or right) and the rich and famous to sort the current climate crisis out then we are sure to suffer the same fate.

Peter Spurrier

31st August 2019 at 12:38 pm

While, I would like Brendan to be right, I have doubts. For example, I remember being told that it is harder for tropical rainforest to recover from being cleared, than it is for temperate forest to do so. This is because less of the tropical forest’s biomass is in the soil, which is due to the higher rate of biodegradation in that climate. I’ve been told that, consequently, soil on cleared land is less productive than in temperate climates. If someone knows better, fine. Also, the rainforest is, I believe, exceptionally species rich.

Joshua Crosby

29th August 2019 at 5:01 pm

China has been replacing what was lost in the Cultural Devolution. It’s not because they have suddenly turned green.

Peter Jenkins

28th August 2019 at 10:47 pm

Do you agree with China planting all those trees? If so why? You don’t believe there is a climate crisis. If not, why use it in support of your argument?

Jerry Owen

29th August 2019 at 8:11 am

P Jenkins
Straw man argument. Most people like to see trees planted , they look nice and they are good for mother earth and its inhabitants to make things with, and eat their produce.The planting or non planting of trees by China is not related to the myth of AGW.

Peter Jenkins

29th August 2019 at 11:14 am

They are planting them on mass to counter damaging effects of soil erosion, air pollution and damaging climate change not because we all like trees! They are using over 60,000 soldiers to meet what China knows is a crisis.

And those who misuse China in the environment debate are those like Katie Hopkins et al who argue that ‘we can do nothing’ when China is rapidly industrialising. Fortunately China is more informed than most on this issue.

My point was not a straw man argument it highlighted your usual sophistry

Winston Stanley

29th August 2019 at 3:03 pm

“If not, why use it in support of your argument?”

His argument was that there has been an increase in trees, contrary to what is commonly claimed. His allusion to China was pertinent to his refutation of that, regardless of whether he “believes” in climate change. No sophistry there.

Jerry Owen

29th August 2019 at 3:29 pm

Air pollution and soil erosion are not related to the myth of AGW.. unless you labour under the delusion that CO2 is pollutant !

Puddy Cat

28th August 2019 at 12:21 pm

Perhaps if the Green Party were not so intent on exporting our industry then such natural wonders would stand a chance. Funny old place the Amazon. Although there is a vast inundation every year as the river overflows its banks, silt rich land as opposed to the forest land which is devoid of mineral diversity, which could be farmed, self renewing large corporations are levelling vast acreages of forest; the Egyptian Nile provides such deposits and they form the basis to their farming industry. Farming has had poor returns in the past in the Brazilian Amazon because it is such poor soil under the trees. The forest is actually quite toxic, birds and mammals need to supplement their diet by ingesting clay to prevent them from having intestinal problems.

Meanwhile, in Russian Siberia, the Chinese have a free hand in dismantling the biggest forest in the world and nothing is said. While we are beset with these celebrity claims for the degradation of the planet, all of which according to the narrative is being done in the western world, the places where their intervention means nothing are getting on with it.

Coal and timber are king and the fastest growing economies in the world in China, the nascent expansion of India, are rapidly accumulating output of CO2 and a plethora of other substances which would make Caroline Lucas’s hair stand on end. Places where she would get Iranian justice if she attempted to intervene.

You may be celebrated for ranting on the level that ‘we are all going to die’ but you certainly wont put food on the table. Energy price hikes are the parents of food banks. The Green movement is a loose confederation of well to do middle class, especially those enjoying the sinecures of government paid jobs, time and money to spare a toxic mix for mischief, and those who given a choice would shun modern day society in any form.

This trade in emotional incontinence has no one to stand against it and refutation lags behind insinuation. Perhaps we need to employ the same parameters to the disfigurement of climate statistics as we do in naming people in sex cases, name the transgressors when and only when there is a charge to answer. Leaving matters to guess work is not cutting the mustard.

Jerry Owen

28th August 2019 at 3:44 pm

Puddy Cat
An excellent post !
..’Energy price hikes are the parents of food banks’.
Wonderful analogy.. I will borrow that one if I may !

chris Ray

28th August 2019 at 3:02 am

In fact it has been established that there is NO nett production of oxygen from a Rainforest !

H McLean

28th August 2019 at 12:31 am

As we saw with the California fires of a couple of years ago when the banning of ground clearing and back-burning led to destructive large-scale fires the well-intentioned but blinkered motivations of environmental activists/politicians can have deleterious knock-on effects.
It doesn’t surprise me that in the rush to virtuously save the planet the truth has become not just a casualty but a victim, but I do have some middle-class greenie friends who would probably be broken beyond all hope if their carefully constructed world-view on global warming was interrupted by the truth. The problem is most people have trouble accepting new information and will actively resist anything that challenges their comfortable middle-class outlook. Articles like this help.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

27th August 2019 at 10:45 pm

How does one move logically from ‘the environmental movement makes exaggerated and/or tenuous claims regarding AGW’ to ‘there is no such thing as pollution or species extinction’? It is irrelevant whether AGW is happening or not – the real issue is preventing environmental damage to the greatest possible extent in order to protect the earth for future generations. Commentators such as O’Neill seem to think that the controversial nature of AGW and excesses of environmentalists justify nuking the planet. Perverse logic indeed.

Ed Turnbull

28th August 2019 at 8:35 am

Enlighten me: just where in that article did BON claim ‘there is no such thing as pollution or species extinction’? Ok, I’ll answer that for you: nowhere. He never wrote those words. By imputing to BON an opinion he never actually expressed you’ve just elimintated what little credibility you had remaining. And BON’s never claimed ‘nuking the planet’ is justified by the execesses of environmentalists; your ability to comprehend what an author actually writes seems somewhat limited.

I disagree that it’s irrelevant whether AGW is actually happening or not. I think it’s utterly relevant, given so much public policy making is predicated on AGW being real, and AGW being one of the greatest great lies of our time.

steve moxon

27th August 2019 at 9:17 pm

Good, important, corrective, agreed; though it is also true that rainforest area across the world has been lost to an alarming extent, and that this really is threatening a vast diversity of species, even primates (orang-utans, notably — the extant species neareet to the common ancestor we share with the other great apes). If there is anything that international co-operation — useless as it nearly always proves, granted — should be about, then this is it. An international armed force to stop illegal logging and money and support to employ locals in a rainforest ‘eco-tourism’ industry: these wouldn’t be bad ideas, would they?

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

27th August 2019 at 10:47 pm

Well said. Despite what O’Neill and others on this thread think, the natural resources of our world are not infinitely inexhaustible and infinitely robust.

Jerry Owen

28th August 2019 at 7:32 am

Nobody has claimed that. Please stick with facts if at all possible.

Hana Jinks

28th August 2019 at 8:41 am

The facts are oven-bitch, is that you tried your hardest to hurt Linda’s heart.

Hana Jinks

Jerry Owen

27th August 2019 at 8:15 pm

Actually genocide has been mentioned .. courtesy of the BBC! According to an indigenous tribesman white people were killing brown people, and so brown people will kill white people !
I watched BBC video footage.. it was .. let me say very ‘artistic’ and designed to panic people.
The fires I saw looked contained and others looked like as BON says treeless areas being burned .. to clear the way for new vegetation.

Jerry Owen

27th August 2019 at 8:29 pm

Regularly burnt land leads to smaller accidental fires. Due to the lack of built up deadwood.
In America the AGW fanatics point to huge fires telling us we are destroying our environment. They forget to tell us that the farmers are banned in many states from having fires.. to save the planet.
Joined up thinking isn’t an eco warriors finest trait !

Hana Jinks

Winston Stanley

28th August 2019 at 5:59 am

H, sorry about the pacemaker psycore the other night. I had to turn it off myself after a few minutes the first time that I heard it but I gave it another couple of chances and it just got better and better. Likely one has to be in the mood and braced for that one LOL.

Anyway, this is some brand new UK trance that I have been listening to tonight. It has a more normal pace LOL. It is like a blend of goa, acid and psy. Maybe you will like it better. LOL Anyway, I hope that you have a good evening.

Hana Jinks

Thanks, Winston. You too. And you’re right…that’s really good. Do you like anything of the vids that l put up?

Hana Jinks

28th August 2019 at 7:32 am

…and it should go without saying that you’ve no need to apologise. It’s good to have a different kinda experience once in a while.

Winston Stanley

28th August 2019 at 5:58 pm

H, I enjoy all of your music vids. They provide a welcome counterpoint for me to my own musical focus. I very much like rock guitar music and there is a danger that I would otherwise neglect it as I explore psy subgenres. I have downloaded all the latest psy from http://www.rupsy.ru/index.php?id=4 and there is a danger that I would just “psy out” for the next year without other input from others. So thank for your contributions.

Winston Stanley

27th August 2019 at 7:00 pm

Seriously, the BBC has engaged in an unrelenting propaganda campaign of fake news over the last week?

And I had thought that the constant BBC anti-Brexit project fear campaign was trustworthy stuff. /s

Jim Lawrie

27th August 2019 at 6:50 pm

An increase in temperature results in an immediate increase in the growth rate of the northern forests.
The temperature difference effected by the Gulf Stream causes conifers on the north west coast of The British Isles to grow at more than 3 x the rate of The Nordic area. Equations have inputs, outputs and results. They are not one sided.

James Knight

27th August 2019 at 6:01 pm

It is not “fantasy” to suggest the lungs of the world are burning. It is more wishful thinking of hate filled eco-toffs.

Raoul Smith

Ian Wilson

28th August 2019 at 6:22 am

Yeh I thought that was being rather generous as well. Climate p8rn activist would be more appropriate.

Joshua Crosby

29th August 2019 at 5:04 pm

When you are making a point, it is more effective to use the research of people who would normally disagree with you than if you only use research from your own echo chamber. So to tell a green Murray Rothbard said their position is retarded will get you nowhere. To tell a green their own prophet says their position is retarded might get them thinking.

Bill Cook

27th August 2019 at 4:36 pm

80% of the world’s free oxygen comes from Phytoplankton. I thought every eco-warrior knew that? Or did they just forget?

John Millson

27th August 2019 at 3:08 pm

There may be some mis-informing and hysteria but with an unhinged oddity like Bolsonaro in charge, many people are on high alert, obviously.

Jerry Owen

27th August 2019 at 8:30 pm

Not in Brazil apparently… They voted him in !
Did you miss that one ?

Hana Jinks

brent mckeon

28th August 2019 at 8:40 am

So because one dislikes a politician it allows one to lie and spread false propaganda. Funny before the current Brazil president Amazon fires were just simply ignored. Left/Marxist/fascist political falsehoods, rubbish everyone everything that does not fit exactly the Left’s thoughts/ideas, especially the truth, which must be rubbished.

Dominic Straiton

27th August 2019 at 3:04 pm

The biggest myth is that the Amazon somehow oxygenates the world saving us all from extinction. This is nonsense .

Jim Lawrie

27th August 2019 at 9:41 pm

Yip. It requires that surface area to be 13 times as productive as the average for the rest of the planet.

terence patrick hewett

27th August 2019 at 1:57 pm

After the fall of the Soviets, the Brit-haters in the UK used the EU to fill their Marx-shaped space. Now that the EU is option is down the tubes – environ-nuttery has to be a good candidate.

Philip Humphrey

27th August 2019 at 1:54 pm

The “lungs of the world” claim is very misleading. Most mature forests like the Amazon tend to be nearly carbon neutral. They’re a mixture of young, old, dying and dead trees. The young ones absorb CO2 as they actively grow, but the dying and dead ones release it again. The two largely cancel each another out. So the forest overall is fixing very little CO2 (and generating very little oxygen). Cutting down or burning the trees will release a certain amount of CO2, but that can be reabsorbed if the trees are allowed to grow again.